Author: Jonathan

Taking back ownership of the word ‘freelancer’

PHPSouthAfrica

Based on some prompting by Hugh I applied as a speaker at PHPSouthAfrica this year. Apparently they still don’t know how little I actually know as they accepted my talk submission 😉

I’ll be talking just after afternoon tea about a topic that has been on my mind since 2010, that of the common perception of the freelancer, specifically when it comes to developers.

A freelancer or freelance worker is defined as a person who is self-employed and is not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Since becoming a freelance developer in 2010 I’ve discovered that there is a stigma attached to the word. I don’t know if it is developer specific, but every time I meet or take on a new client the fact that I am ‘freelance’ tends to inspire visions of horror, usually of poor deliverables, bad client support and just a general lack of responsibility. In my talk, I would like to unpack this problem and provide some solutions to it.

Here are the slides for this talk.

Filed under: Development, Experiences, FreelancingTagged with:

2017 24 Hour Roll-a-thon fund raiser

This coming weekend I will be taking part in the 24 hour roll-a-thon at Gracie Jiu Jitu Cape Town, raising funds for cancer sufferers/survivors and a local hospice. If I’m honest though, the main reason I am doing this is my jiu jitsu buddy, Juan Poerstamper.

Juan has been dealing with Cancer since around 2012. He’s had a rough time of it over the past five years, finally being declared clear (again) earlier this year.

What amazes me about him is how friendly and positive he has been through this all. He is an amazing young man and I am happy to do anything to assist him.

In part, the roll-a-thon this weekend is raising funds to help him pay for his increasing medical expenses. As I am fortunate enough to have a slightly international reach, I would ask that anyone who follows my blog please consider donating, even $5, towards this cause.

When you make the donation, please ensure to add your name so that I can make sure to credit you in the follow up post on Monday.

Thank you.

 

 

 

Filed under: Experiences

Gutenberg day ??? – well that was hard!

I remember the first time I read about Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret. At the time it seemed trivial, but after trying to write a blog post per day for the month of September using Gutenberg, and then failing miserably at it, I can admit to the fact that planning to write something every day and actually doing it, are two very different beasts.

Then I woke up this morning and saw that it has been decided that Gutenberg will no longer be using React. That’s a pretty big deal if you ask me. It also makes me realise that even one of the biggest open source projects in the world can make drastic changes to how it’s original goal was envisioned.

So instead of trying to blog every day I’m just going to try and blog more, maybe once a week, with a better ‘check’ against myself to ensure it gets done. With Gutenberg still a long way from being merged into core it’s on me and everyone else who makes a living from WordPress to ensure that when it is officially released, it’s awesome, not just good.

Filed under: Experiences, WordPress

Gutenberg day 8 – Contributing to Core

I’m attempting my first shot at contributing to WordPress core with ticket that was opened 8 years ago!

I feel like it’s small enough that I can get something done by the time the next release rolls around but useful enough that it will make peoples lives easier.

Feel free to follow the ticket to see how it pans out.

In other news, using Gutenberg today was a bit of a pain. Because I use Jetpack’s publicise functionality to share my content socially and Jetpack does not yet support Gutenberg (for obvious reasons) I have to write up the post in Gutenberg but not publish it and then edit the Post in the usual way and publish it. Today this lead to me loosing all my content and merely switching to the regular post editor. Fun times.

Filed under: Development, Experiences, Freelancing, WordPress

Gutenberg day 7 – New things

WP HackerCast

Today I'm especially excited to blog as I have a little news to share. The first episode of my new podcast has officially been published.

WP HackerCast – Episode 1 – Seagyn Davis

WP Hacker Cast is my way of talking to and learning from all the great WordPress developers I know and communicate with. I've got some great interviews coming up, but the first is always the most special.

I hope you enjoy it.

Filed under: Development, Experiences, Freelancing, WordPress

Gutenberg day 4 – New things

New_Office_Space

Today was a my first day in my new office space.

Since becoming fully self employed at the beginning of 2016 I've been working mostly from home on a day to day basis. This has led to a few frustrating moments, although based on what I've seen I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this.


In order to try and find better focus on my work and more of a separation of work and home life, I'm sharing an office space about 10 minutes from where I stay. It works out pretty well, except for a minor hiccup today which meant I lost about an hour of my day.

The upside however is that I am less inclined to take my laptop out when I get home and I'm therefore less inclined to work after hours. Part of me still feels like I haven't done enough today but I'm hopeful that as I get used to the new setup I'll become more productive with the time that I do have for work. 

Filed under: Experiences, Freelancing

Gutenberg day 3 – Blogging every day is hard!

Blogging

Who knew?

I often come up with ideas and jump into them without thinking. This has been both a blessing and curse over the past 40 years of my life. This idea to blog every day for September using Gutenberg was probably just as mad, as by the time I get to the end of the day I tend to forget to blog. So now it's 23:30 and I'm trying to get my obligatory post in before I got to bed. Perhaps I need to have a plan for this?

In any case, this little personal discovery has led me to today's blog post, so at least I've managed to fulfill my quota.

Filed under: Experiences